This was an article which appeared in Bob James blog last month, The Mighty Copywriter. I liked it so much I am using it again…
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Having been around in the business awhile, I have had the luxury of watching great shows come and go, like watching cruise ships in the harbor. Bob asked me what the critical factors are which will hasten the decline of an event. I’d boil them down to two things:
- Losing positive engagement with your key stakeholders which are:
– Top 10 sponsors
– Top 10 content drivers or thought leaders
– Top 10 attendee groups
– Top 10 suppliers-hotel, general service contractors
Someone has spent years building the relationships which grew the event to be a market leader. As the event grew, you may have started to take things for granted, or gotten greedy with large profits rolling in, and you forgot the nuts and bolts of keeping relationships healthy and mutually profitable. As the market grew, your competitors became hungrier than you, and started treating your stakeholders better than you and they started to drift.
- Not knowing what’s going on in your market from a DNA level
Is your knowledge of your market place ‘imported” ie are you part of the market or just serving it? If the latter, how do you know which innovations to feature without being too forward or not forward enough?
That’s the bad news. How do you reverse the trends? Just do the opposite of the above and make a commitment to keep all your relationships healthy and your knowledge current and relevant! Resting on your laurels in this business is going to eventually end in disaster…..